Help! This should be the best place to ask this question

nuke_diver

nuke_diver

Riding Solo
Now that I am working on my career as a rockstar I suppose I should practice more. Since I don't sing well I feel I need to improve my chops overall. While I am ok on basic chords/rhythm and can do leads if I know the key I am not good at the following things:

1. My ear is not good, I cannot (or rarely can) hear what the key/chords are so what can I do to develop this more.
2. I stick to the "basic" chords i.e. major/minor/7 all over the next but in the basic format like barre chords. I rarely play inversions and wonder how I can work on getting these done so I don't think about them (If I think I get slower and mechanical)
3. I don't "play over the changes" while soloing partly because of #1, I don't recognize the chord that has changed easily (this is not to say that I don't know that there was a chord change but to hear exactly what it is without known the progression is a major challenge for me)

Any tips?
 
Obviously, you can't get very far with #3 until you've got #1 down, so focus on that. Whenever I'm learning a new instrument, I start with some familiar children's songs and try to work out the melody (I'm a school teacher, so maybe there's some other genre of very easy diatonic songs that you are more familiar with). That gets the ear in shape, and also gets you thinking about melody in a way that's not blues-box scale work. There's unfortunately (to my knowledge) no way but work to do ear training--turn on Spotify, and try to find the key. Playing the changes is advanced stuff, so don't worry about it--you can get away with playing your standard lead tricks, just focus on finding the key.
 
A big part of this is to just learn your diatonic major scale theory both on paper and on the fretboard. @Chicken Man has it though when he says that a good (and I feel the best) way to train your ear and to hear melodies instead of licks is to just learn simple melodies. Even starting with simple nursery rhyme and kid stuff that you have heard your whole life would be a good first step.
 
DV016_Jpg_Large_584343.jpg
 
Yep. Melody. Sing it and find it on the guitar and play it. If you cant sing it go deeper, to the nursery rhyme level if need be.
Thats how I got my leads out of the mechanical blues box.
I went on to immerse myself in simple 3 chord folk and bluegrass songs to develop my my abilty to hear chord changes.
You gotta be able to tell the I from the IV and V before you get into anything more harmonically sophisticated.
 
I know my scales and some theory...it's kind of a math so I'm ok at math. What I don't do well with is recognizing notes/chords without playing them. That is I cannot easily listen to a song and say oh that is in Em.

I spent some time yesterday on a Caged lesson which I pretty much know but it was a good lesson so it was good practice. I also did some ear training using an online program that gives you a couple of notes and you need to identify what they are....I apparently have trouble hearing the difference between a 4th and 5th :cry: For some reason I don't do well without the instrument. I'm not sure if it is because of the program/speakers I have. With a guitar the intervals sound a fair bit more different than they did in the program. If I have a guitar I could figure out say Mary had a little lamb but without I couldn't tell you the notes or the intervals. Same goes for figuring out a song.

I appear to have a lot of work ahead of me
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top